Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Jonathan Paul Katz writing in the Forward must work for the Moroccan Tourist Board, so complimentary is he towards the place. Scandinavia, he finds, is more antisemitic (clearly his tour bypassed Morocco's local extremists). Morocco has rid itself of all but one percent of its Jewish population but is praised for its 'tolerance' and 'diversity', while others excoriate Israel, with 20 percent of its citizens who are Arab, as 'apartheid'. Bizarrely, Katz sees everything western (Ashkenazi) as worthy of criticism.

Image of the Moroccan sage Baba Sali, whose hilula (pilgrimage to his tomb) takes place yearly

A number of times, I was told — by everyone from
taxi drivers to a high-ranking Moroccan government official — of the
country’s immense diversity. “We have Arabic-speakers and
Berber-speakers, Muslims and Jews and Christians, secular people and
niqab-wearers,” one person told me. A taxi driver originally from the
town of Taroudant in Morocco’s south told me that “though the Jews and
the French of our town have left, we still miss them.”

Sometimes
I would reveal that I’m Jewish — it is my dream, after all, to someday
attend one of Morocco’s iconic Jewish pilgrimages, a hiloula. This
admission was met with one of three responses: an urging to come back
and go to the great hiloula of Ouazarzate; an apology or regret for the
treatment and exodus of Moroccan Jews in the 1950s and 1960s; or, most
frequently, a narration of the Jewish facilities still available in
Morocco today. These stories were occasionally punctuated by mentions of
the Jews they had met — locals, French, Israelis — or of the
Moroccan-Jewish singer Neta Elkayam.

Nowadays, Morocco has roughly
5,000 Jews (more like 2,500 - ed), and thousands of Israelis and other Jews of Moroccan
descent visit every year. But in the 1950s and 1960s, many Moroccan Jews
did face great difficulty (my emphasis), and freedom of Jewish practice was only
strengthened in the recent constitution (Islamists banned 'Jewish' in the constitution, however, and the word Hebraic was substituted - ed). Morocco’s human rights record
leaves much to be desired, and fundamentalists continue to seek (and
have harmed) the Kingdom. Yet I was struck by the openness of Moroccans
to their Jewish brethren — and to the very idea of their existence. (Why not? Jews preceded Muslims in Morocco and do not have to plead for acceptance - ed)

What
struck me most is a celebration of diversity that we often do not see
in Europe. We are always told to engage with Germany, with Sweden, and
with the Netherlands — “safe countries” that look like secular-Ashkenazi
Israel, with “Western” values and tolerance of Jews. Yet I, a survivor
of anti-Semitic violence, have never felt so threatened as a Jew than I
did when walking the streets of Lund, Southern Sweden’s university city,
in January. In one day, I spotted and heard more anti-Semitism — in
graffiti and conversations — than I did in a week in Morocco. But
somehow we’re still told that Sweden and Denmark are “clean and safe”
(like Israel), whereas Morocco is “dangerous and dirty” for Jews. We
celebrate the Jews who return to Berlin, city of Hitler, but not those
who return to Tunisia or Morocco.

The very idea that Jews could be
and are Moroccans seemed so natural to many locals — in fact, I was
told by my host in Casablanca that their grandchildren are “100%
Moroccan” — even before they knew I was Jewish. (“And I thought you were
Catholic!”) Yet in Sweden and the Netherlands and Norway, the very
ability of Jews to integrate is again up for debate. We celebrate
without full consideration the countries that Ashkenazim enjoy, yet the
countries of Mizrahim and Sephardim somehow remain beyond the pale.

So,
from Morocco, what I would like to say is this: Tolerance is not the
province of Western white people alone. I saw a greater acknowledgment
for the intersection of different identities — Moroccan and Jewish,
Berber and Muslim, Arab and francophone — than I have ever seen in much
of the West.

Yes, Morocco may have safety issues. Yes, the exodus
of Morocco’s Jewry looms large. Yes, Morocco’s support (alongside many
Jews’ support) for the Palestinian cause leaves some pro-Israel Jews
queasy. But Morocco is in the midst of achieving something that many
European countries have not yet started: the idea of a Jew as part and
parcel of the country’s heritage.

Monday, March 30, 2015

When 140, 000 Jews left Iraq, whatever happened to the property they left behind?

This report on the Hona Baghdad Channel (Arabic) has been stirring Jewish memories on social media. It begins with a visit to the home of Sasson Heskel, modern Iraq's first Finance Minister, now an arts centre. The programme's presenter then takes us to see the Watania primary school which
was located near Qunbar-Ali. The principal was the Arabist Ezra Hadad.

After a visit to Sook Hanoon, we are taken to the imposing entrances of Jewish homes in Abu Nawas St in Bataween, a new district of Baghdad built along the Tigris in the 1930s.

Emile Cohen in London makes periodic appearances on Skype. He describes how the last desperate Jews of Iraq escaped from their homes leaving the television switched on, so that no one would suspect they would be gone for good.

Most of the houses had been sequestrated by the government. There was no chance of the Jews getting restitution - the Jews were considered 'the enemy'.

The overall impression is of neglected sites badly in need of repair, with graffiti on the walls and rubbish strewn all around. Few Jews would recognise their homes, schools and markets in Baghdad today.

PS The video ends with a view of Baghdad's new Jewish cemetery, with its 2, 000 graves. The land was donated by the Daniel family after the government destroyed the original Baghdad cemetery in 1958.

“The five books of poetry he published... are the epitome
of courageous dealings,” wrote the Israel Prize committee, “sensitive
and deep with a wide range of personal and collective experiences
centered around the pain of migration, planting roots in the country
and the reestablishment of the Mizrahi identity as an integral part of
the overall Israeli portrait.”

Sunday, March 29, 2015

According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor has called on the Security Council
to “break its silence” on the “plague” of persecution of minorities in
the Middle East. At last Israel's public policy is putting the exodus of Jews from Arab lands in its true context. (With thanks: Lily)

Prosor cited the upcoming Passover holiday and
the escape of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, saying persecution
continues “without interruption and under the nose of the
international community.”

In a meeting of the 15-nation council
on minorities in the region, Prosor warned that millions of Christians,
Kurds, Yazidis, Baha’is and Jews still face persecution.

“It
doesn’t matter where you come from, what faith you belong to, or what
politics you preach, no decent human being can ignore the calamity
facing minorities in the Middle East,” he said.

Israel is as a haven in the region for minorities, he said.

“There
is the one place in the Middle East where minorities have the freedom
to practice their faith, to change faiths, or to practice no faith at
all – and that is Israel,” the ambassador said.

Israel is home
to a pluralistic society where people of various faiths are represented
in the upper echelons of society, Prosor stressed. He noted the
freedoms exercised by those who face persecution in much of the rest of
the region, including members of the Baha’i, Jewish and Christian
faiths.

Christians living under Hamas rule in Gaza do not have
the same political freedoms as those in Israel, the ambassador
underscored. After the Islamist group took control of the Strip in
2007, half of the Christian community fled, Prosor said.

He also
spoke of the Christian population under the Palestinian Authority,
saying Bethlehem’s Christian population fell by 70 percent since the PA
assumed control in 1995.

Referring to a variant of an Arab
proverb that relates to Jews and Christians, Prosor said radical
Islamists having a saying: “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday
people.

“Having driven out the vast majority of Jews out of the Arab lands, extremists have turned on the Christians,” he said.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Three sisters of Yemenite descent from Israel's southern Arava desert have been taking the Arabic music world by storm. The Times of Israel has their story:

Here’s a sound that hasn’t been heard before. The guttural trills of Yemeni Arabic, couched in the text of a traditional women’s song, filtered through the harmonies of American musicals and the stylized rhythms of hip-hop and reggae.
It’s the sound of A-Wa (pronounced Ay Wah, and Arabic for “yes”), a trio of sisters who are about to release their first single, “Habib Galbi,” based on the music they’ve been hearing since birth.

“It’s like we ransacked everything,” said Tair Haim, 31, the eldest, and smallest, of the three. “We’re sisters, and we’re three sisters, we’re Yemenite, we’re from this tiny place down south, and we’re adding hip-hop and reggae to traditional Yemenite music.”

Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim, 31, 29 and 25, are perched close together on an old black leather couch in the Kaboom studio, on the edge of Tel Aviv’s Florentin. They just completed a rehearsal for next week’s gig at Barby, Tel Aviv’s club for local rockers.
The three are the oldest of their parents’ six children, raised on Shaharut, a remote southern farming community in the Arava where they learned to rely on one another.

It was Tair Haim who was first bitten by the performance bug. She got up on a makeshift stage at her seventh birthday party and announced an upcoming performance, to which she graciously invited Liron, the next in line.

Friday, March 27, 2015

How dangerous does Yemen have to become before the last Yemenite Jews decide to flee? Ynet News reports :
Israel is closely
following developments in Yemen, where Gulf states are bombing
Iranian-backed fighters, and has expressed deep concern over the fate of
the last few Jews in the country.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a series of air strikes
overnight Wednesday, battling Iranian-backed Houthi fighters who have
captured swathes of the country.

The Jews of Yemen (Photo: Reuters)

Israel believes that there are less than 100 Jews remaining in Yemen.
Most of that number is concentrated in Sanaa, which has fallen to the
Iranian-backed rebels.

The Foreign Ministry and the Jewish Agency have been in an ongoing
state of frustration over the refusal of Yemen's Jews to leave, despite
the risks there.

The Jews living in Yemen - most of whom had the opportunity to leave
for Israel or another country, but refused – face an approaching danger
from the advancing rebel forces, who have repeatedly made statements
against Israel.

"We don't want to leave. If we wanted to, we would have done so a
long time ago," Sanaa's chief rabbi Yahya Youssef said in February.

He did concede, however, that: "Since last September, our movements
have become very limited for fear of the security situation."

Rabbi Abraham Haim at the Turkish border with Syria with boxes of Matza destined for the tiny number of Damascus Jews. The photo was taken some years ago.

The Israeli press has reported that a mother and daughter were smuggled from Syria into Israel last year. It is likely that the mother lived outside the known Jewish community - possibly a Jewess married to a Christian. The remaining 20 Jews caught up in the war-torn country have shown no intention of leaving. This year, as in previous years, they are being sent supplies for Passover.

The Jerusalem Post reports:
A mother and her daughter escaped from Syria and made aliya to Israel
last year, Ma’ariv reported Friday after the news was cleared for
publication by the censor.

Their escape via a neighboring
country of Syria was facilitated by the Jewish Agency, and the two are
now in an absorption center in the South.

Another daughter, who
was turned down, returned to Syria. She had married a Muslim with
children from a previous marriage and agreed to convert to Islam by a
Muslim cleric. A source familiar with the situation explained that the
second daughter’s request was denied because the Law of Return doesn’t
recognize the right of Jews who convert to another religion to exercise
their right to immigrate to Israel and automatically become a citizen.

By the morning of Feb. 19, Rabbi Abraham Haim had collected more than
300 pounds of Jerusalem-made matzah for delivery to Syria. Boxes of the
traditional Jewish crackers were stacked up to the ceiling of his
cramped apartment in Bnei Brak, a religious suburb of Tel Aviv.

A few days later, the matzah would travel on a plane with the rabbi to Istanbul, Turkey.

And by late March, just before Passover — “God willing,” said Haim —
the matzah, repackaged in label-less brown boxes, will have made the
journey, through rain and snow, to a Turkish border town near Aleppo,
Syria. Turkish smugglers who work closely with Haim then plan to cross
into Syria and hand-deliver the matzah to approximately 50 Jews who,
according to Haim, still live in the urban center of Damascus. (Others
with connections to the Syrian-Jewish community have put its population
even lower, at around 20 people.)
Haim makes this Passover mission every year — “and every year, we have a
miracle,” he said, sitting at his dining-room table in Bnei Brak. “I’m
speaking by phone with these people, and every year, they tell me they
got it, that it arrived.”

Thursday, March 26, 2015

As the renovated Edirne synagogue is unveiled, Turkey joins the ranks of those Muslim countries giving priority to beautiful but empty Jewish buildings over a thriving community of actual Jews. Article in the Jerusalem Post: (with thanks: Heather)

EDIRNE, Turkey - When the domes of Edirne's abandoned Great Synagogue
caved in, Rifat Mitrani, the town's last Jew, knew it spelled the end of
nearly two millennia of Jewish heritage in this Turkish town.

As
a boy, Mitrani studied Hebrew in the synagogue's gardens and in the
1970s, dispatched its Torah to Istanbul after the community shrank to
just three families. In 1975, he unlocked its doors and swept away the
cobwebs to marry his wife Sara.

"Only I am left. It happens slowly, becoming the last one," said Mitrani, 65, whose family fled here more than 500 years ago.

Now
a five-year, $2.5 million government project has restored the
synagogue's lead-clad domes and resplendent interior ahead of its
Thursday re-opening, the first temple to open in Turkey in two
generations, but one without worshippers.

It is part of a relaxation of curbs on religious minorities ushered in during President Tayyip Erdogan's 12 years in power.

Yet
it coincides with a spike in anti-Semitism in predominantly Muslim
Turkey and a wave of Jews moving away, say members of the aging
community, which has shrunk by more than a third in the last quarter
century.

The increase, observers say, is linked to anti-Israel
sentiment which reached a crescendo during Israel's Gaza offensive in
July. Erdogan compared Israel's assault on Palestinians to "genocide"
and "Hitler's barbarism."

He drew distinctions between Israel and
Turkish Jews, yet his words helped stoke outrage, and local Jews were
threatened by public figures and pro-government newspapers.

Turkey's
Jews, most of whose ancestors sought refuge here from the Spanish
Inquisition, are on edge. Their schools and synagogues are behind
security tunnels, shielded by steel blast protection.

"They have
lived in a state of fear for a long time after terror attacks and the
feeling that they are not treated as Turkish citizens. There is worry
for the younger generation," said Ohad Kaynar, Israel's deputy consul
general.

Louis Fishman, an expert on Turkish affairs at Brooklyn
College in New York, saw evidence of government indifference to
anti-Semitism. "Buildings might be protected but the people who visit
them are subjected to regular hate speech and threats," he said.

Erdogan's
spokesmen and other officials did not respond to requests for comment
for this article. However, the Turkish government has been at pains to
distinguish between its Israel policy and its attitude towards Turkey's
Jewish population.

Close allies under
previous governments, Israeli-Turkish ties hit a nadir in 2010 when
Israeli commandoes stormed a Turkish-led convoy of ships carrying aid to
Gaza and killed 10 Turks. Turkey withdrew its ambassador and ejected
Israel's.

"Regardless of the fact that we identify ourselves as
Turks, we are still perceived as foreigners. Tensions between Turkey and
Israel directly impact us," said Karel Valansi, a political columnist
with Salom newspaper.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The media have claimed that the spectacular synagogue of Dura-Europos in Syria, one the world's oldest, has been seized by ISIS: in reality, most of its wall paintings have been transported and reconstructed at the National Museum in Damascus. Adam Blitz describes how western archeologists found the site in the Times of Israel:

The site was (re) discovered by chance during
the Arab revolt of 1920 when British-Indian troops pitched camp. Several
well-preserved wall paintings with scenes of the Roman commander Julius
Terentius sacrificing to the gods were unearthed in (what was later
identified as) the Temple to the Palmyrene Gods.

News of the discovery reached James Henry
Breasted, archaeologist and founder of the University of Chicago’s
Oriental Institute, who was on expedition in Mesopotamia (beyond the
Euphrates) at the time. On the 2nd of May 1920 Breasted,
together with his colleague Daniel Luckenbill, crossed over from Abu
Kamal to devote a day to the site. Breasted’s notes and Luckenbill’s
photographs would later appear in the inaugural publication of the
Oriental Institute in 1924, Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Paintings. The conclusions would shape discussion about Dura-Europos and its art for decades to come.

The site was subsequently excavated by Franz
Cumont of the French Academy [1922-23] and later by Yale University
under Michael Rostovtzeff, Clark Hopkins and Frank Brown [1928-1937].
During Yale’s tenure the city was identified as the Dura cited in Parthian Stations by the 1st
Century Greek Geographer, Isidore of Charax. The identification was
secured with an inscription to the goddess Tyche, “the good fortune (tyche) of Dura” within a wall painting from the Temple of the Palmyrene Gods.

It was also under Yale’s leadership that the
synagogue rose from the dust. It was the most sensational find of the
sixth season [1932-33] and arguably the entire 10 year expedition.

Saul anointing David

This was in fact the second of two synagogues
built on the same site opposite the Temple of Adonis: a short distance
from both the main gate and the House-Church (the earliest
securely dated Christian building ever to be discovered). The original
and substantially smaller synagogue had evolved from a private house
built in the Parthian age; as it was for the neighbouring Christian
shrine.

Construction began afresh shortly after Roman
rule. Concurrent with the developments of other public and private
spaces to include the Mithraeum and the House-Church, the synagogue was renovated. It was given a colonnaded atrium and the House of Assembly
(the shrine) was enlarged such that it now covered an entire city block
in width. The date of the renovation (245 CE) was ascertained from an
inscribed ceiling tile with mention of the benefactor, Samuel the leader, Abraham the treasurer and Arsakh the non-Jew or proselyte.

The synagogue’s House of Assembly was also embellished as part of the programme. Wall paintings, tempera on plaster or secco (not fresco), were added in 249/250 CE. These covered all four walls in five horizontal bands.

Dura Europos Synagogue West Wall with Torah Niche

At the time of its unveiling in 1932, 40% of
those images had been destroyed. 29 panels with just under sixty
biblical scenes in three bands awaited; as did peripheral stone benches
and an aedicula: a scallop-shaped niche for the Torah built in the western wall (which faced Jerusalem).

In diverse hue some of the most prominent
narratives refashioned themselves in a very local setting: baby Moses in
the basket with Pharaoh’s daughter as a Grecian water nymph, Moses
crossing the Red Sea, the binding of Isaac, Saul anointing David, the
investiture of Aaron (in Roman toga), Mordechai riding triumphant,
Elijah restoring the widow’s son, the capture of the Ark by the
Philistines and the defeat of the Philistine god Dagan (and destruction
of his temple at Ashdod), are a few examples.

Upon the walls were also two sets of
inscriptions: dedicatory Aramaic with less abundant Greek and graffiti
inked on the “Purim Panel” (with Mordechai) in Middle Persian and
Parthian – a “calling card” from unknown visitors.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

After all the abuse directed at Mizrahim in recent days, Ben Dror Yemini (himself of Yemeni-Iraqi parentage) steps forward (in a climb-down from a previous article slamming anti-Mizrahi elitism) to declare that there is no gulf between Ashkenazim and Sephardim /Mizrahim. We are simply witnessing extremists on both sides, mostly post- or anti-Zionists, amplified by the media, who are trying to bring down society by playing a race card. The reality, he writes in Y-Net News, is quite different.

There is a fascinating
coalition between militants on both sides. They are trying, with great
effort, to put together a conflict between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
The
former are returning to the days of old anti-Mizrahi racism, and the
latter are excited by the "A Mizrahi votes for a Mizrahi" slogan. The
former include types such as Prof. Amir Hetsroni, author and former
actress Alona Kimhi, and the "Lo Latet" ("Don't Give") campaign, and the
latter are intellectuals from the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow who have
turned Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri into their messiah.
We should pay attention to the fact that
most of the people taking part in this dispute, on both sides, are
either post-Zionist or anti-Zionist. That's no coincidence. They are
trying to sell us a split, racist society which is falling apart.

In the 1960s, Kalman Katzenelson published a book titled "The
Ashkenazi Revolution," a slanderous lampoon by a revisionist who claimed
that there are two people living in Israel: Supreme Ashkenazim and
inferior Sephardim. It was an antithesis of the integration of exiles
vision. The book wasn't a success. Katzenelson didn't represent the
revisionists, and his new successors, Hetsroni and Kimhi, don't
represent the Ashkenazim. Just like the Shas voters among the
anti-Zionists don’t represent even one-quarter of the Mizrahim.

The problem is that both groups are being given backing and a
stage in certain media channels. They are being discussed and inflated.
They are being turned into a stream and phenomenon. In the social media,
this slander is turned into a celebration.

So we should put things in order. There is no abyss between the
camps. There is no abyss between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. That's
nonsense. There is an abyss between the extremes. Insanity versus
insanity. Hatred versus hatred. In reality, there is a different Israel.

Over the weekend, two days ago, I attended a family event in one
of Tel Aviv's satellite cities. A celebration for a daughter who has
just been born. The mother is "mixed." She is neither Mizrahi nor
Ashkenazi. The father is an engineer, a kibbutznik. There were many
other similar couples there. The middle class. The elections were
forgotten. It's seems that when you leave the bubble of the phalanges of
the extremes, there is another life. It's a bit different. The newborn
baby has no ethnic identity. There are many others like her, from Gideon
Sa'ar to Dov Khenin, even when people don't know that's what they are.

Following the outburst of racism on the days after the
elections, we have forgotten, and so have I, that the other Israel
represents the majority. Eighty percent of the members of the golden age
club already have "mixed" grandchildren and great grandchildren. Here
and there, there are ethnic ghettos, mainly among the haredim, but for
the rest this is a disappearing thing.

There is no need to cover up anything. There are still
expressions of racism. There are remainders of the state racism we used
to have here, which requires distributive justice. And certain elites,
like the Supreme Court and the academia,
are finding it difficult to change. Not because there are no suitable
candidates, but because of the power maintenance mechanisms.

Seven children died and the mother and eldest daughter are fighting for their lives. Media coverage of the tragedy that befell the Sassoon family after a Sabbath hotplate malfunctioned casts a fascinating light onto the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn, NY, to which the family belonged. Article in the New York Times:

The
couple came from far-flung corners of the Syrian Jewish diaspora: He
was the son of a grandee in a Syrian Jewish outpost in Kobe, Japan, who
attended a Canadian international school and spoke fluent Japanese; she
was the daughter of a family with a comfortable life in southern
Brooklyn, home to a thriving enclave of more than 75,000 Syrian Jews.

But
when they met, in Israel, around 1998, Gabriel Sassoon and Gayle Jemal
had arrived at similar points in their spiritual journeys. After his
secular upbringing and her moderately religious one, personal blows and a
deepening sense of devotion had propelled them to Israel, where he
studied the Torah. There, they married and began raising the family that
would grow to include eight children.

Not
long ago, the man who had roamed across continents and the woman with
roots deep in New York returned to Brooklyn with their children,
settling into what promised to be a contented life not unlike the one
she had grown up in — full of big Sabbath dinners in her childhood home
and summers on the Jersey Shore.

Then
came the fire: the relentless blaze that spread from a malfunctioning
hot plate in the family’s first-floor kitchen to the upstairs bedrooms
early Saturday morning, killing seven of the Sassoon children and
critically injuring their sister and mother. Mr. Sassoon, who had
continued studying the Torah after leaving Israel, was at a religious
retreat in Manhattan at the time.

“Seven
Sassoons are gone,” Mr. Sassoon’s second cousin, David Sassoon, said
softly on Sunday, a few hours before a crowd of hundreds mourned the
seven children at an Orthodox Jewish funeral in Brooklyn. “It’s very
hard to think about that.”

Among
the Syrian Jews who live in Midwood, Gravesend and along Ocean Parkway,
the deaths are, collectively, a tragedy of stunning proportions. Ms.
Sassoon, who remained hospitalized on Sunday, is one of their own, one
of several siblings who grew up in the terra cotta-orange-roofed house
at 3371 Bedford Avenue that is now a charred shell.

Like other affluent Syrian Jews in Brooklyn,
her parents spend summers in Deal, N.J., and winters in Florida. Like
other observant Jews in their community, the Sassoons used an electric
hot plate to keep their Sabbath meal warm on Friday night to adhere to
religious prohibitions against cooking on the day of rest.

Monday, March 23, 2015

The Israeli election seems to have unleashed an ugly, pent-up racism among the left-leaning cultural elite towards the Mizrahim who voted 'in their droves' for Netanyahu's party.
But Mizrahim, with their memory of the 'Jewish Nakba' in Arab countries, were, on the whole, never going to vote for the more dovish Zionist Union. Lyn Julius blogs in The Times of Israel:

“Drink cyanide, bloody Neanderthals. You won. Only death will save you from yourselves.”

By
the time the author of these words, an award-winning writer called
Alona Kimhi, had deleted them from her Facebook page, it was too late.
The blogosphere was buzzing, and Facebook and Twitter heaved with
similar enraged disgust, even hatred, accusing Netanyahu and his
supporters of racism. Some Israelis even started a campaign called ‘Lo
latet’ to stop donating charity to the poor: They deserved punishment
for perversely supporting the Right, even when Netanyahu’s ‘capitalist
policies’ hurt them most.

Netanyahu’s ‘racist’ comments pandered to his
racist supporters. He had exhorted them to come out and vote because
‘Arabs were being bussed to the polling stations in their droves’.

But the Zionist Union’s own chairman, Yitzhak
Herzog, blamed a speaker at his party rally the previous week for the
Zionist Union’s defeat: artist Yair Garbuz had derided the “talisman
kissers” and “tomb worshippers” who support Netanyahu.

His remarks were taken to refer to the
country’s traditionalist Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern and
North African descent. But, argued columnist Ben Dror Yemini,
Garbuz was not the only one who harboured these condescending thoughts.
The Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli establishment – writers, artists, dramatists, media people, academics – must crush its ‘inner elitist’.

Professor Amir Hetzroni's insulting diatribe against Mizrahim is the most venomous yet. Had he been a minister 60 years ago, he would never have let Moroccan immigrants enter Israel under the Law of Return. When the presenter demanded he apologise, he walked out of the TV studio. (With thanks: Ahuva, Janet)

The Garbuz moment unleashed the ‘ethnic demon’
into the election campaign, Yemini opined. That was the moment when the
Israeli election became about identity politics.

Although he did not distance himself from Garbuz’s comments at the time, Herzog said he ‘did not subscribe to those beliefs’.

“I have nothing to do with Garbuz. “I have a
golden rule – never to criticize beliefs and opinions, or to insult
someone for their faith.”

A chastened former Labour leader Shelly
Yafimovitch appeared on Israeli TV. She bitterly regretted Yair Garbuz’s
words, and promised change.

Even before the election, far leftist commentator Dimi Reider
wrote that the Garbuz episode showed something was seriously rotten in
the state of the Left. The Israeli electorate has not voted in a Labour
government since 1999. If they are ever to win back voters from Likud,
the Left needs to do some serious soul-searching.

All Israelis have experienced Hamas rockets
and Arab terrorism, but only the Mizrahim carry the memory of what it
was like to have lived in Arab countries and to have been brutally
displaced from them.

The average Likud voter has not forgotten the
‘Jewish Nakba’. He and his family were dispossessed and uprooted from
Morocco or Iraq, but antisemitism still haunts and hounds his tiny
corner of the Middle East.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the beheaders of ISIS hover on Israel’s doorstep while Iran rattles its nuclear sabre.

Israel would be mad to go the route of
political concession and show weakness, the Neanderthals reasoned. There
is no compromise with genocidal jihad. It’s a no-brainer.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

France's majority-Sephardi community is refusing to heed the advice of its leading lights, such as the author Marek Halter, to stay in France and fight antisemitism rather than choose aliyah to Israel, The Times of Israel reports. (With thanks: Michelle)

Halter is among the most prominent French Jews
to urge his coreligionists to stick it out in France, but his campaign
is exposing tensions between integration-minded progressives — many of
them Ashkenazi, like himself — and a more insular Sephardic majority
that favors aliyah.

Sephardic Jews are believed to constitute a
disproportionate number of French immigrants to Israel — 80-90 percent,
according to Sergio DellaPergola, a sociologist at Hebrew University and
one of the world’s foremost experts on Jewish demography. Overall,
Sephardim represent about two-thirds of French Jewry.

The overrepresentation of Sephardim, according
to DellaPergola, owes to “traumas that many North African Sephardim who
settled in France after the 1950s brought with them, from living in
Muslim societies where many enjoyed a peaceful coexistence, but where
many others were beaten and discriminated against.”

Violent anti-Semitism “brings back very
unpleasant memories for Sephardic Jews, who already have a higher
propensity to make aliyah also out of religious sentiment as they come
from more traditionalist societies,” DellaPergola said.

Shoppers
outside the Hyper Cacher market near Paris, where four people were
murdered in January. The shop reopened on March 15, 2015. (Serge
Attal/Flash90/JTA)

Last year, 7,231 French Jews moved to Israel, a
record-setting figure nearly three times the number who came in 2012
and which made France the world’s largest source of new Israeli
immigrants. After the supermarket killings and the murder of a volunteer
security guard outside a synagogue in Denmark, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was preparing for massive
immigration and urged European Jews to consider the Jewish state their
home. Some officials at the Jewish Agency, the semi-official body that
coordinates global aliyah, expect as many as 15,000 Jews to arrive from
France this year.

Friday, March 20, 2015

According to Arutz Sheva, the leader of the centre-left Zionist Union party blamed its failure to win Israel's election on a speech at a party rally by artist Yair Garbuz, backed by playwright Yehoshua Sobol. In what was widely taken to refer to Israel's traditionally religious Sephardim, Garbuz derided 'talisman kissers and tomb worshippers'. In a TV interview leading politician Shelly Yafimovich also regretted that Garbuz's remarks cost the Z U the election.

Artist Yair Garbuz: infamous

Days after a somewhat unexpected loss, Zionist Union
Chairman Yitzhak Herzog has found a scapegoat for the party's poor
showing.

According to Herzog, Yair Garbuz - the now-infamous artist who
said before elections that Israel was under the control of a cabal of
“swindlers, molesters, and mezuzah kissers" - was the reason for the
party's big loss.

Speaking in an interview Thursday, Herzog “complimented” Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his very effective campaign, especially
in the days preceding Election Day.

“He ran an obsessive campaign full of lies and fear-mongering,
and he managed to ruin Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home and Eli Yishai's
Yachad, and to take votes from Shas and Yisrael Beytenu. It's as if
Netanyahu reinvented himself last Friday,” when the polls showed Likud
trailing his party, Herzog said. (...)

“There's no question that the speech given by Garbuz hurt us,” he said.
Although he did not condemn or distance himself from the
comments when they were made, Herzog said Thursday that he obviously did
not subscribe to those beliefs.

“I have nothing to do with Garbuz,” Herzog said. “I have a
golden rule - never to criticize beliefs and opinions, or to insult
someone for their faith.”

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Poets and fellow Iraqi exiles Salah Al Hamdani and Ronny Someck found they had a great deal in common: both were born in the same year in Baghdad, and both share a love of the
land where poetry likely began. Ilene Prusher wrote in Haaretz:

A groundbreaking meeting in the Middle East peace process took place
this week, part of a secret back channel that could change the face of
the region.
Scratch that. Rephrase, as writers are wont to do, with less hyperbole and more happenstance.
The groundbreakers in this event were poets, not politicians, and the
back channel is not so secret. Salah Al Hamdani, an Iraqi poet jailed
under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and now living in France, is in
Israel this week, in part to acknowledge and celebrate his deepening
friendship with the poet Ronny Someck, who was born in Iraq and came to
Israel with his family at the age of 2.

Both men discovered a little
over four years ago, during a poetry festival in France, that not only
were they moved by one other’s writing, but they were both born in
Baghdad the same year.

“When I realized that he was born in Baghdad
in 1951, I came to a realization then: I have a Jewish brother who lives
in Israel,” Al Hamdani told an audience gathered Monday night to hear
the two men interact and read from their works as part of the Jerusalem
International Book Fair. “I ran to meet him, because I thought, maybe he
looks like me. And we do look like brothers, right? Especially around
the head,” Al Hamdani joked with the crowd in a theater of the Jerusalem
Cinematheque, running a hand through his thick white shock of hair and
gesturing to Someck’s bald head.

They do not actually look alike,
but they share a love of the land where poetry likely began, with the
Epic of Gilgamesh, and both have deep, gravelly voices that rumble so
low, it’s hard to fathom that someone can sound so manly and so poetic
at the same time.

“I speak to him, Ronny speaks his Iraqi as he
feels like it,” Al Hamdani continued, eliciting more laughter. “And we
understand each other, beyond the words. From there, two Iraqis in exile
sitting in France, we came to realize that Baghdad needs us.”

Al
Hamdani proposed a collaboration, and Someck agreed. In 2012, the two
men came out with a joint book of poetry, “Baghdad-Jerusalem,” with
their work appearing in French, Hebrew and Arabic. The next year, Al
Hamdani took up Someck’s invitation to come to Israel for a poetry
festival in Haifa — largely a quiet visit. But this, Al Hamdani’s second
visit to Israel, amounted to his first appearance in Jerusalem and Tel
Aviv to attend a major literary event.

“I’m here and I will return
here to meet the Jews of Iraq. They’re my family, they’re my blood,” Al
Hamdani said in French, his comments followed by interpretation into
Hebrew. “There’s a lot to say about all the problems between Israel and
Palestinians, and Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, but these
are not what I’m here to talk about.”

In a separate interview, Al
Hamdani said he “lost some friends” when his connection with Someck and
his travel to Israel became known. Many other poets, writers and artists
in the Arab world hold that any kind of cooperation with Israel amounts
to “normalization” that should be avoided, particularly in the face of a
complete meltdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“I can’t be
dictated to about where I should go, any more than I was able to
tolerate living under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein,” Al Hamdani
told Haaretz. Referring to the late Palestinian poet, he said: “Even
Mahmoud Darwish wrote and spoke Hebrew. Should he be ostracized for
that? I do have my critique of Israeli policy, but I think it’s for the
Palestinians to work out a solution to this conflict with Israel, and I
don’t think someone from Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Qatar can decide for
them. In the meantime, I am proud to be here, and proud of what the Jews
of Iraq contribute to my culture.”

Another poet was also involved
in bringing Al Hamdani to Jerusalem: Gilad Meiri, director of the Poetry
Place, a literary project working out of a community center in
Jerusalem. Meiri was present at the festival in Sète, France, when the
two men signed a contract to do a joint poetry collection on a
coffee-stained café napkin.

“We see the terrible racism now in
Israel toward outsiders, so it was very important for us to bring Salah
to the fair to send a message of openness and coexistence — of
multicultural realities,” Meiri said in an interview. “Moreover, the
fair’s roots have been more focused on commercial interests, and so the
position of the poet at the fair is not that high. Bringing an
international poet like Salah Al Hamdani to the fair means raising the
profile of the poet. Most Arab poets don’t want to do any kind of
artistic cooperation with Israel or feel they can’t, and he’s engaging
with us in an amazing and wonderfully warm way.”

At the book fair
event, Meiri — accompanied by the music of Luna Abu Nassar, an Israeli
Arab musician whose songs move flawlessly between Hebrew and Arabic —
read a poem he’d written about Katamon, a West Jerusalem neighborhood
populated by wealthy Christian Arabs until 1948. The sale to a developer
of a plot of land that had been the place where Meiri watched years of
Hapoel Katamon soccer games helped him relate to the Palestinians’
feelings of loss and longing, he said.

In reaction to this, Al Hamdani told the audience that this poem, like his very presence in Israel, was a statement.

“He who is in exile, he is doing a political act. My presence here is
itself a political act. And in a way I am taking a certain risk. There
are those who would like to take our heads off for this and see us
dead,” Al Hamdani said. “When I come here, I bring memories, I bring
messages. The poem on Katamon, what, there’s no political meaning there?
Of course there is, and that is a natural thing.”

Writing in Middle East Eye, Michal Zak is right that Mizrahi Jews are discriminated against in Israel. But in my view they are not in the same boat as Arabs and Palestinians, the darlings of the Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli Left, as Zak implies. Education is indeed the answer, but while schoolchildren must be taught the glories of Mizrahi civilisation, they must also be told about the Jewish Nakba in Arab and Muslim lands.

School textbooks devote only nine out of 400 pages to Mizrahi history

At the end of 2014 the Israeli
Academy of Sciences and Humanities held a conference called “From hating
the stranger to accepting the other.” The President of Israel and the
Minister of Education were guests at this distinguished conference. The
list of speakers included both Jews and Arabs. Mizrahi Jewish speakers
were not on the schedule. The organisers of the main conference did not
seem to see any need to point out who among the Jews has European
origins and whose origins are North African and Asian.

But while the conference of the Israeli Academy went about discussing how to accept the other,
Mizrahi artists, religious leaders and intellectuals who had not been
invited to join the panels took part in an alternative conference
organised at the last minute in a religious centre across the street.
They named it: “The Voices of the Others.” Despite the last-minute
notice and the cold and rainy weather, they filled the auditorium.
Jewish musicians sang in Arabic and scholars spoke of their visions.

Dr Meir Buzaglo, a philosopher who organised the event, pointed out
how the name of the official conference reflects the dominant discourse.
When speaking about “accepting the other” it appears to be clear to
everyone who the other is and who is responsible for doing the
accepting: “It’s as if Mizrahim, Arabs, Orthodox Jews and Ethiopian
Jews, who constitute three quarters of the population, are all sitting
around and waiting to be accepted.”

Professor Haviva Pedaya, an expert in Judaism, pointed out the
achievements of Mizrahi activists: "We led a revolution in the cultural
arena (Mizrahi music has moved from the margins to the mainstream over the years),
but we must remember that this is only a cultural revolution. The next
step must be an educational revolution. All of the history textbooks
describe us as backward and none of us have encountered a fair textbook.”

Israel's Jewish population is divided into these two groups, with the
European (Ashkenazi) group as the majority group among the Jewish
citizens. It is also the group that has been in power since 1948 and has
discriminated against the Jews from North Africa and Asia (Mizrahi Jews).

One reason for this kind of “colour blindness” at the conference is
that Israel was established to be a safe and secure home for all Jews.
Divisions, racism and discrimination among Jews undermines this
historical promise. I can only compare the attitudes towards
discrimination against Mizrahi Jews to the ways in which abusive
relations within a family tend to be handled – with silence and denial
and with a tendency to blame the victim. Those who claim that Mizrahim
suffer discrimination are told that this is a thing of the past and that
today anyone who works hard can succeed.

Next step: representation in text books: Pedaya's discussion of textbooks was graphically illustrated some
years ago by the artist Reuven Gal who addressed the marginalisation of
Mizrahi history in the books that were used when he was a high-school
student. He showed that only nine out of the 400 pages in the book were
devoted to the history of Jews from Muslim countries.

Pages have been added since then, but Pedaya's call for an
educational revolution requires more than that. History is still told
from the perspective of European Jews with the Mizrahi - and of course
the Arab - as the “other”. Throughout my education I was given to
understand that there is less representation of Mizrahi history and
culture than of Jewish history in Europe because nothing worthwhile
happened in the Jewish communities in Muslim countries over the past 200
years.

The Jewish communities from the Muslim countries are often portrayed
as backwards and as needing to be saved by the Ashkenazi Zionists - a
perspective contributing to stereotypes about the Mizrahim as passive,
primitive and lazy. The history textbooks have evolved over the years
and these overt stereotypes have been replaced by a more subtle
discourse which describes the Mizrahi as partners in the building of the
nation. But until this new discourse includes admitting to the racism
they suffered from, it is unlikely that things will fundamentally change.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

As Israelis cast their votes today, Haaretz assesses the chances of the main contenders on the hustings. Here is the newspaper's analysis of the prospects of three major Mizrahi party leaders: Moshe Kahlon, founder of Kulanu, Eli Yishai, who leads the Be'Yahad breakaway from Shas, and Arye Dery, who heads Shas.

Moshe Kahlon: Polls give him anything between eight
and twelve seats in the new Knesset, and if hundreds of thousands of
undecided voters turn to Kulanu as their default choice, Moshe Kahlon
could even do much better. What isn’t in doubt is that he will be the
kingmaker within the next Knesset. Netanyahu and Herzog both need
Kahlon’s MKs to form a coalition, he may be the decisive voice forcing
them to sit together in a national-unity government.

With a less than overwhelming charisma and a rather
low-key campaign, Kahlon has reached the point where both prospective
party leaders are bound to give him the coveted post of finance
minister. He did it by sticking doggedly on the trail to social-economic
issues, particularly cost-of-living, and by refusing to say who he
plans to recommend as prime minister when summoned to the president. He
will have a tough choice on March 18 and his political future is far
from clear, but for now he is man of the moment.

Eli Yishai: Two years ago the
political future of the then-Shas chairman seemed to be in terminal
decline when the ailing Rabbi Ovadia Yosef demoted him twice, handing
the political leadership of the party first to a triumvirate and then to
the old-new chairman, Arye Deri. A few months later, Rabbi Yosef, who
nevertheless remained his patron, was dead. Yishai is not the first
former Shas lawmaker to breakaway and form his own party, though he is
the first who seems about to succeed in an independent venture.

Nearly all the polls have Yahad passing the
electoral threshold and receiving at least four seats in the next
Knesset. Yishai has linked up with some of the most extreme elements in
the religious right, creating a potent mixture of Haredi rebels, radical
settlers and Kahanists. Many Israelis are shocked at the prospect of
Rabbi Kahane's disciples making it into Knesset; but from Yishai's
perspective, it seems to be working. He has created a new constituency
and wreaked revenge on his old rival. He is unlikely to be a member of
any future coalition, but is now the voice of the extreme-right in
Israeli politics.

Arye Dery: With the death of party
founder Rabbi Ovadya Yosef and the departure of his old rival Eli
Yishai, Dery is now the sole leader of Shas. The rabbis of the Council
of Torah Sages are mere puppets he has appointed and the party’s
fortunes rest solely on his shoulders. But the man who was once the
wunderkind of Israeli politics (before he was convicted of bribe-taking
and sent to prison) seems to have lost his magic and Shas was slowly
sinking in the polls.
Dery may still work his magic and outperform the
polls as Shas has often done in the past. But he has lost his ability to
dominate the agenda and Moshe Kahlon has stolen his thunder as the
brave Mizrahi politician working for the underclasses. Shas’ campaign on
behalf of the “transparent” Israelis failed to capture the imagination
of voters and his last-minute slogan “A Mizrahi votes for a Mizrahi” was
seen by many among its target audience as a crass play of identity
politics. Dery will almost certainly be a minister in whatever
government is formed after the election; but it will take all his fabled
deal-making acumen to secure him a major ministry. A poor result will
also cast doubt on his ability to continue leading Shas in the
post-Rabbi Yosef era.

Monday, March 16, 2015

David Gerbi at the Teatro Argentina in Rome during the January 2015 run of 'I love Libya'.

Remember David Gerbi? He was the intrepid Libyan Jew who returned to the land of his birth during the 'Arab Spring' in 2011. He tried to pray in a Tripoli synagogue but was unceremoniously thrown out of the country after threats to his life.

David Gerbi has been telling his story, mainly to schoolchildren, in a one-man show called 'I love Libya'. He first enacted it in English in the US in 2007 and in South Africa. The show toured San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle in 2013.

'I love Libya' was put on for World Refugee Day in June 2014 under the patronage of UNICEF and most recently at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in January 2015 to mark the first day of remembrance for Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

"The show tells the story of suffering, injustice and individual and collective persecution," Gerbi told the Rome newspaper Corriere della Sera."It 's also the story of a community dispersed from Libya but reborn in Italy."

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Myriam, 83, is a Jewess living in the Beka'a valley in Lebanon. She has never been to Israel, only a few miles away. But she wants to be buried in the Holy Land.

Myriam tells her moving story here (scroll down to sound file). She remembers a few Hebrew phrases from the Jewish school she went to in Beirut. She grew up in the multi-confessional environment of Lebanon - Christians and Muslims would vie for the chance to be her family's 'Shabbat goy'.

She had intended to go to Israel to get married: her aunt had arranged for her to meet suitors there. But by some twist of fate, her mother broke her leg and insisted that Myriam stay in Lebanon to look after her. She cashed in her air ticket and eventually married an Orthodox Christian.

She used to speak to her family in Israel on the telephone. However, the Jews of Lebanon became the target for vengeance attacks. "Being Jewish is not an illness," she says defiantly."We're all human," digging up for the France Inter interviewer her Hanukiah and an artefact with the Ten Commandments from among her crucifixes.

She pushed aside her anti-Jewish friends as all contact was cut off between Lebanon and Israel. "Israel is my country, my religion", she says. Although she has never been there, she wants the tiny Jewish community of Lebanon (less than 30 members ), contrary to her children and grandchildren's wishes, to help her achieve her last wish of burial in Israel near her mother's body.

Friday, March 13, 2015

With the Israeli elections looming, an artist and Haaretz contributor called Yair Garboz (Garbuz) has been venting his prejudices against 'talisman-kissers' and 'tomb worshippers', an obvious reference to Israel's Sephardim and Mizrahim. Condemnation comes from an unlikely source, founder of the far-leftist 972 magazine Dimi Reider. Reider produces some fascinating data indicating that Israelis still vote along ethnic lines, with the poorer Mizrahim supporting Shas and the more affluent Ashkenazim supporting Yesh Atid and Meretz. The mainstream parties are more evenly divided. The left needs to address Mizrahi grievances if it is to make headway, writes Reider. I would say he is partly right - but the Left also needs to tailor its foreign policy agenda to a constituency hard-bitten by Arab antisemitism.

Yair Garboz:derided 'talisman-kissers'

Garboz’s
remarks were not merely patronising and prejudiced, throwing such
innocuous - and to many, cherished - experiences as pilgrimage into the
same category as corruption, genocidal racism and murder. They also
highlighted a tremendously important and painful political divide that
usually goes unseen by foreign observers: Israeli voters attribute
considerable importance to the often unstated ethnic affiliation of a
party, almost as much as they do to its political role.

A week before the rally, this
overwhelmingly ignored reality was confirmed by a rare survey broadcast
by Channel 10 that asked for whom Ashkenazis and Mizrahis intended to
vote. The resulting division could not be clearer: 51 percent of the
potential voters who support the Zionist Union, which the current
standard bearer of Labor Zionism, are Ashkenazi, and only 29 percent are
Mizrahi.

Among the voters for the Union’s
more liberal cousin, Meretz, whose stronghold is among Tel Aviv
academics, kibbutzim and professionals, 69 percent are Ashkenazi and 12
percent are Mizrahi. Habayit Hayehudi, product of the historic Ashkenazi
Religious Zionist movement, has 46 percent Ashkenazi voters and 31
percent Mizrahi. Yesh Atid, an “apolitical” centrist capitalist party
appealing to Israel’s urban young professionals, has 51 percent
Ashkenazi voters and 29 percent Mizarhi.

Meanwhile, Likud, the original
vehicle of Mizrahi electoral awakening, boasts the most equal division
between the two communities, with 41 percent Ashkenazi voters and 39
percent Mizrahi. Kulanu, a centrist party led by a prominent Mizrahi,
ex-Likud politician Moshe Kahlon, comes close to the Likud balance with
36 percent Ashkenazi voters and 42 percent Mizrahi. Shas, the only party
so far to bill itself as a party by Mizrahis for Mizrahis,
specifically, ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Jews, boasts 75 percent Mizrahis
among its voters and only 5 percent Ashkenazi.

These results are further borne out by the voting data from the 2013 elections, processed into map form
by the Madlan real estate portal. Hover over Tel Aviv, its northern
suburbs or any of the kibbutzim that dot the map, and you will see
overwhelming votes for Labor, Meretz and Yesh Atid.
Look over
Tel Aviv’s poorer southern suburbs, like Bat Yam and Rishon Letzion, or
over the far-flung “development towns” where the original Mizrahi
immigrants were shunted, and see the color change to blue, with
overwhelming vote for right-wing parties and for Shas.

Israeli left-wingers who like to
claim that intra-Jewish discrimination is a thing of the past also like
to wonder loudly - and often sneeringly - why the poorest Israelis
continue to vote for Netanyahu, even though his ultra-capitalist
economic policies hurt them first. The question should rather be who and
what they are voting against, and how the left-wing parties can address these grievances, past and present.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

In the last frenzied days before Israelis go the polls, the new Beyahad party has put compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries at the top of its political manifesto. Beyahad is headed by Eli Yishai, who broke off from the main Shas party, and includes the splinter group Moetzet Hakhmei Hatorah.

The Beyahad website commits the party, if elected to government, to work with the Jewish organizations from Arab countries in
order to implement their rights and to develop the initiative of funding
compensation for refugees through the Clinton Plan. The Beyahad platform also includes a paragraph on
improving education about Jews from Arab countries in schools as well as promoting their heritage and history.

Other parties also mention the Jewish refugee issue, such as Yisrael Beteinu and the Zionist Union. However, Beyahad is the first party to recommend compensation by way of the Clinton International Fund.

The driving force behind the Beyahad initiative is MK Nissim Zeev, who followed Eli Yishai out of Shas. There is no doubt that the Jewish refugee issue is close to Nissim Zeev's heart. It was Zeev who introduced the bill passed in the Knesset in 2010 requiring compensation for Jewish refugees to be on the peace agenda, and also initiated the idea of instituting 30 November as a Memorial Day for Jewish Refugees from Arab countries in the Israeli calendar. When Shas became part of the opposition, the Memorial Day bill was shepherded through the Knesset by Shimon Oyahon MK of Yisrael Beteinu.

Zeev, who stands a good chance of being re-elected to the Knesset, last week convened a meeting with organisations representing Jews from Arab countries, and is seeking to get ex-President Bill Clinton, who first proposed the idea of an International Fund at the Camp David talks in 2000, to kick-start the fund.

All countries would contribute to the International Fund, including Arab countries and Israel, although the US is likely to donate the lion's share. The fund would be used to compensate both Jewish and Palestinian refugees.

The commentator Nahum Barnea caused a stir recently inY-net News when he asked if the Kerry peace talks last year had taken seriously the Jewish refugee issue.

The very next day, the article brought forth a robust 'yes' from Netanyahu's office: he and his chief negotiator Yitzhak Molho had not agreed to any proposals which excluded Jewish refugees. Molho had taken over from Tsipi Livni after her failed talks with Abu Mazen.

Perhaps to make up for her lukewarm approach to the Jewish refugee issue, Livni's Zionist Union, which she heads with Labour's Yitzak Herzog, added the folllowing unexpected words to their manifesto:"the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries must be addressed in any final-status agreement."

However, organisations representing Jews from Arab countries are disappointed that the Zionist Union does not intend to raise the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries during the negotiations themselves.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Norway will host a
conference during the week ahead on Jews under Islamic rule. Hold on to your hats, the main guest from Israel will be far-leftist anti-Zionist Gideon Levy - who knows a lot about the subject - not. Ben Dror Yemini in Y-Net News: A read
through the lecture program reveals that the central line of the
conference will be that the Jews lived wonderful lives under Muslim
rule, until the Zionists came along, snatched them from their Muslim
health resort, and enslaved them in Israel. I may be selling some of the
participants short; perhaps someone there will have something of value
to say. It's been known to happen on occasion – even in the academe.

The
thing is, the main guest from Israel, the great expert on the history of
the Jews under Muslim rule, who is also a great expert on the situation
of the Arab Jews under the rule of the Zionists, who is also the great
expert on the situation of the Muslims under Jewish rule, is – hold on
to your hats – Gideon Levy.

Iraqi Jews make way to Israel

For the most part, Jews lived under Muslim rule as subjects of
inferior status. Now and then there were periods, during a part of the
Golden Age for example, in which Jews were generally accepted in society
and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
When the Christians expelled the Jews from Spain, the Ottoman
sultan was the one who invited them to settle in his empire. The
colonial era saw another period of flourishing Jewish life under Muslim
rule. These periods, however, were the exception.
Some academics have managed to turn the tables. They glorify the
periods of coexistence. They hide the pogroms, the decrees, the abuse
and the oppression. And they certainly hide the Jewish Nakba.
The Jews didn't suffer from abuse and oppression because of Zionism.
To the contrary. They became Zionists because of the abuse and
oppression. But manipulating the facts will triumph once again – under
the patronage of Gideon Levy and so-called academic freedom.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

A Jew in Tunis needs to tread on eggshells, and Rabbi Benjamin Hattab, in London to collect funds for a school in memory of his son Yoav - killed in the Hyper Casher attack in Paris - is nothing if not a diplomat. But did he really need to say, 'I am an Arab'? Report in Jewish News (with thanks: Michelle):

In London to honour his son at a
communal dinner hosted by the Centre for Jewish Life, Rabbi Hattab is
speaking to the British media for the first time since the Paris
attacks.Having appeared already on French and
Tunisian television, Hattab has been a powerful ambassador for
reconciliation and interfaith dialogue.

But when it comes to the spectre of
rising European anti-Semitism, what we believe and what we want to
believe can be two very different things.Did his son feel safe in Paris? “Yes, he felt at ease in France. He never feared that something like [the attack] could happen.”

No provocations at all? No warning
signs? “The truth is that when he first arrived [in France] he told me:
‘Dad, there’s ‘death to the Jews’ written on walls.’ Then he said: ‘Dad,
when I walk in the street wearing my kippah, Arabs sometimes hit me.’
Then, he paid for his Judaism with his life.”

Yoav with his parents

In 2014, some 7,000 of France’s 600,000
Jews made aliyah. That’s twice as many as the previous year. Hattab
sympathises with their motives, saying: “I feel safer in Tunisia than I
do in France, more than I do in England.”

The tragic irony of this latest attack
on Paris’ Jews is not lost on him. Having left an Islamic country for
the land of liberté, egalité and fraternité, his son met his end at the
hands of a French-born Islamist.

For Hattab, it is the cultural and
religious exclusion felt by Arabs living in the West that is chiefly to
blame for the fractious ideological landscape that serves as fertile
ground for home-grown jihadists. Radicalised Arabs aren’t ‘chez eux’, at
home in the West, whereas, he says, in Tunisia “we live together, we
have a shared history. There are no problems between Jews and Arabs. I
myself am an Arab”.

There are an estimated 2,000 Jews
living in Tunisia today – that’s just two percent of the 100,000 strong
community at the outbreak of the Second World War.

As Chief Rabbi of a diminished Jewish
population in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, Hattab is as skilled a
diplomat as he is a scholar. His measured delivery and broken voice
betray a still-raw grief. Yet his message for the Tunisian government
that “protects our synagogue, our school” is one of gratitude.

Monday, March 09, 2015

How ready is Algeria to tolerate Jews? This article by Farah Souames from Open Democracy has been circulating and raises some good points. However, it also labours under a number of misconceptions. My comments are interspersed in bold:

In Algeria, like other countries of North Africa and the Middle East, there are red lines when discussing politics and religion. Some Algerian writers have bravely debated Jewish minority rights, but raising too many questions about Algeria’s Jewish minority is still taboo. This is because most people confuse Israel, Judaism and Zionism.

They certainly do. But even if they did not the Algerian state still discriminates against non-Muslims: the constitution grants Algerian nationality only to those with a Muslim father.

Algeria’s Minister of Religious Affairs, Mohamed Aissa, recently spoke of plans to reopen 25 synagogues closed down in the late 1990s, during Algeria's civil war. The news provoked some Algerian Muslims to protest. The minister, however, says Algerian Jews have a right to exist. Although welcome, the statement is ironic, because few in Algeria would openly acknowledge Jewish identity. Indeed, many observers claim that the Algerian Jewish community no longer exists.

Correct.

Radical Islamists have reportedly led opposition to the minister’s plan, but their anger does not stem from Islam itself. Muslims in the Maghreb have a history of coexistence with other religions, as is true in other Middle Eastern countries. Instead, their intolerance is driven by recent history and politics.

For recent history and politics read "the Arab- Israeli conflict".

Muslims and Jews coexisted for centuries in Algeria until European clerics introduced“anti-Semitism.” French colonists offered Jews special treatment, allowing them to capitalize on new economic opportunities. In 1870, the famous Crémieux Decree granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews, elevating their status from “colonial subjects” to “French citizens.”Some Muslims felt betrayed, leading to the first significant rupture between the two communities. Later, Algerian Muslims accused Jews of failing to support the country’s war of liberation.

A revisionist account harking back to the 'myth of peaceful coexistence'. Firstly, French citizenship was imposed on the Jews of Algeria by France. Secondly, Muslims were also offered citizenship in 1865, but refused it. To say that becoming French led Jews to capitalise on economic opportunities smacks of antisemitism.It is not true that Algerian Jews did not support the country's war of liberation. The Jews maintained neutrality for as long as they could - until anti-Jewish attacks by the FLN tipped them over to the French side.

In Algeria, religious intolerance against Jews emerged from these processes of colonization and de-colonization, and from a war of independence that generated popular resentment of perceived injustice.

Not true. Intolerance has a long pedigree in Algeria: French citizenship did allow Jews to escape their inferior 'dhimmi' status, earning them Muslim resentment.

Today, Jews are like ghosts in Algeria; we hear about them living among us, but we never see them. Some say Jews still live in Algeria under strict surveillance, but most Algerians are confused: is there still a Jewish-Algerian community? And if so, is it safe to speak about it? Many suspect that the community exists, but fear that this is a matter of state security about which they should not comment.

In other words, those who speak of Jews could be accused of spying or abetting spies, a poor foundation for intercommunal relations.

Jews are not the only victims of Algerian intolerance; there is also discrimination against Christians. An Algerian Muslim who converts to Christianity is despised because s/he has given up her faith to embrace the ex-enemy’s religion. As a result, even people who are not religiously devout are likely to threaten a convert with rape or death.

In neighboring Tunisia and Morocco, the last few thousand remaining Jews can practice their faith and send their children to Jewish schools. Most Tunisians and Moroccans – ordinary citizens as well as scholars and academics – speak openly of Jewish contributions to their countries. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Algeria, where people vandalized both Christian and Jewish religious symbols, including cemeteries and places of worship, after independence, and during the 1990s’ civil war.
The Arab-Israeli conflict has of course deepened the gap between Algeria’s Jews and Muslims, and has undermined hopes of re-establishing a Jewish presence in the country. Unfortunately, many residents of Arab countries confound anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

The author bravely confronts Algerian antisemitism, but then spoils the message by her spurious distinction between 'good' (anti-Zionist) and 'bad' Jews.

Follow by Email

Click picture for Facebook page

Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)